Sydney – On The Rocks
I woke up bright, early, and refreshed on the morning of my first full day in Sydney. I managed to be one of the first up in the dorm (how odd it is to be back in dorm land after the exceedingly cheap hotel rooms of South East Asia), and yet again woke everyone up by creaking my way to the bottom. I’m determined to send a bottle of WD40 to the fols at Wake Up hostel. Still, undettered, I was dressed and out sharpish. I had big plans for the day.
My first stop was The Rocks, on the Western side of Sydney Cove. It’s the site of Cadman’s Cottage, the oldest house in Sydney,
which is a small but fitting tribute to the European History of the area, and also the rather wonderful Museum of Contemporary Art. The current exhibition is all about place and identity, with a particular emphasis on refugees and assylum seekers. I absolutely loved it. Maybe it’s because I’m in a continual state of flux at the moment, but I really identified with some of the pieces. Modern art doesn’t always grab me, but this did.
After having a wander through the rest of the old Rocks streets, and visiting The Rocks museum which gives a great insight into the area’s somewhat seedy past, I tool a train up to the seedy area of the 21st century, Kings Cross. This is full of backpacker hostels and strip joints (no comments, please, as to how one would lead to the other), and was certainly a different side to Sydney compared to the ones I’d seen to date. Not my favourite part, it has to be said, and I was relieved I didn’t go for one of the hostels in the area. One thing that might make me change my mind, though, was the rather wonderful Harry’s Cafe De Wheels, perhaps one of only two pie vans in the world that count as a tourist attraction (the other one, of course, being the one run by ex-Dollar star David Van Day in Brighton). The pies, one of which I sampled for my lunch with mash, peas and gravy, were scrumptious, and well worth a visit.
I’d walked my legs off again, so headed back to the hostel, for the first time in months about to cook my own tea. Hostels here in Australia have cooking areas, so to keep costs down, it makes sense to cook your own. It’s also a great social area – I got talking to a couple of other people there (including one guy who waxed lyrical non-stop for 10 minutes about pumpkin, declaring them the “backpacker’s friend”. Try not laughing during that, I challenge you). Luke from my dorm was also there and gave me my first Tim Tam biscuit, the legendary snack from Down Under. Tasted a bit like a penguin.
Back in my dorm room, I was reading my Lonely Planet and planning my next day, when in walked my Welsh room-mate. We got chatting about our days, and ended up nattering for the next couple of hours, no doubt driving the rest of our room mates to distraction. We were going in opposite directions to each other – Andy (as I found out his name was) had just come from NZ and South America and was heading to Asia, whereas of course I was doing the same trip in reverse. We absolutely clicked immediately, having the same ridiculous sense of humour, and a passion for the countries the other was about to visit. Before we annoyed anyone too much, we decided to head down to the hostel bar, where we carried on talking the ears off each other for the rest of the night. Turns out he’s an Evertonian as well (yes, there’s more than one of us!). We stayed there, enjoying the live music, the wine, the beer and the chat, until we were turfed out.
We giggled our way back up to our dorm room, making plans to go and explore more of Sydney together the next day, deciding that we had so much fun together it would make more sense than going alone. Still laughing, and no doubt waking up the rest of the room, we fell into our beds – well, I fell, having baggsied a bottom bunk when one girl moved out earlier that day, Andy climbed up to his top bunk. I think I was still laughing when I fell asleep.
Tags: Australia, Travel
Suzanne